1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to an improved system and method for performing skill set analysis and assessment; and more particularly, relates to a system for allowing skill set assessment to be performed against a comprehensive set of skills using one or more minimum skill sets that may be uniquely tailored for each system user.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In today""s competitive marketplace, employers are often seeking ways to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of their workforces. One way to accomplish this evaluation process is by assessing the skills possessed by their employees. This knowledge can be used to make informed employment and staffing decisions. This information may also be used to award compensation adjustments, to grant promotions, or to offer incentives that encourage employees to acquire additional skills. Training programs may be developed to compensate for deficiencies uncovered by the skill assessment process.
Skill assessment may be performed by an employee""s management. More often the skill evaluation process will be completed by employees themselves. Each employee may be required to rate his proficiency at performing a set of skills considered important for adequately performing his job. Sometimes this xe2x80x9cskill assessmentxe2x80x9d process may be performed manually. Alternatively, it may be performed with the aid of an automated skill assessment tool running on a data processing system.
Several skill assessment tools are available commercially. These tools allow a set of skills to be entered into a database for use in performing the assessment process. This skills set will generally be defined when the tool is installed for use, and can be modified during the life of the tool. The skill set will usually include all skills related to any employee located anywhere in the entity employing the skills set. For example, an automobile manufacturer employing an automated skill assessment tool may define the skills set to include all skills related to all employees, including those employees in engineering, manufacturing, marketing, managerial, and accounting positions. As a result, this comprehensive skill set may include thousands of unrelated skills ranging from those skills associated with assembly line techniques to skills relating to knowledge on acceptable accounting methods.
By defining a comprehensive skill set such as the one discussed above, any employee anywhere in the company can access the same database to gain a list of skills for which assessment is to be performed. However, the use of this comprehensive skill set may also make using the database cumbersome since only a small number of skills in the database may apply to any given employee. Returning to the previous example, an employee in the engineering development staff has no need to evaluate his proficiency at performing accounting tasks. Likewise, a marketing employee will most likely not be expected to perform skill assessment for skills related to manufacturing jobs.
Because most skills included in a comprehensive skill set definition may not be applicable to any given individual, the evaluation process may be time-consuming. This is especially true since prior art skill assessment tools do not provide a way to filter out the irrelevant skills on an employee or group basis. That is, each employee performing the analysis process must access the skills database and decide from the comprehensive skills list which skills will be evaluated and which will be ignored. Some tools provide this comprehensive skills list as an alphabetized menu of skills. This makes the evaluation process particularly difficult since the skills are not arranged in any sort of a logical manner. The user must therefore review the entire list to select applicable skills for assessment. Other tools display the comprehensive skill set using some logical groupings; for example, all skills associated with an engineering position are presented as a logical skill group. This makes the assessment process easier. However, the employee is still required to view all skill groups in the comprehensive skills set to select the groups thought to be applicable, then select the relevant skills from the selected groups so that assessment may be completed. This selection process makes skiff assessment unnecessarily burdensome and time-consuming.
The selection process associated with prior art skill assessment tools is cumbersome for other reasons. First, prior art tools do not provide a way to communicate, on an employee-by-employee basis, or on a group-by-group basis, those skills that must evaluated. As a result, an employee performing the skill assessment process may have to use an educated guess to decide which of the skills in the database are actually applicable to his job. This introduces errors into the process, since not all employees within a group may perform evaluation on the same set of skills, and the resulting evaluation data may therefore be incomplete. Alternatively, management may have to manually provide a list of skills for a given employee or employee group to use during the assessment process. This manual process is time-consuming, and introduces error into the process. Finally, several levels of management may participate in manually generating the lists of skills that are to be used by individual employees or employee groups during the evaluation process. When this list is received, there may be no indication as to which level of management selected a particular skill for addition to the list. This information may be valuable to an employee in determining the priorities to be placed on acquiring additional skills.
What is needed, therefore, is a skill assessment tool that allows a user to perform the assessment process using only that minimum set of skiffs selected from the comprehensive skiff set that is applicable to the user or to the user""s group. This minimum set of skills should be communicated automatically by the tool. The tool should also communicate information related to the manner in which the selected minimum set of skills was defined. For example, the tool should communicate which level of management made the decision to add a particular skill to the minimum set of skiffs for a given employee. Finally, the tool should organize the comprehensive skill set in a manner that allows a user to easily comprehend the types of skills that must be assessed.
It is a primary object of the current invention to provide an improved system and method for performing skill set assessment;
It is another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system that allows one or more minimum skill sets to be defined for use in more efficiently performing skill set assessment against a comprehensive set of skills;
It is still another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system that allows minimum skill sets to be defined that are tailored to one or more users of the system;
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system wherein minimum skill sets are defined in a manner that reflects a corporate or business structure of an entity utilizing the system;
It is still another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system for allowing minimum skill sets to be defined in a hierarchical manner;
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system that allows multiple individuals to contribute to the definition of minimum skill sets;
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system that provides a comprehensive hierarchically-defined skill set;
It is a further object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system that includes a user interface for allowing skill set assessment to be initiated at any level of hierarchy within a hierarchically-defined comprehensive skill;
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system for mapping a hierarchically-defined minimum skill set against a hierarchically-defined comprehensive skill set to aid in the skill set analysis process;
It is still another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system capable of tracking, for any given user, those skills included in a minimum skill set for which analysis has already been completed;
It is another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system that includes multiple minimum skill sets, wherein a user may select one or more of the multiple minimum skill sets for use in performing skill set analysis; and
It is yet another object of the invention to provide a skill set analysis system for generating reports based on minimum skill set definitions.
Still other objects and advantages of the present invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment and the drawings, wherein only the preferred embodiment of the invention is shown, simply by way of illustration of the best mode contemplated for carrying out the invention.
The forgoing objects and other objects and advantages are provided in the current invention, which is an improved skill set assessment system and method for allowing a user to complete the skill set assessment process by reviewing only the subset of skills relevant to the user""s employment position. According to the invention, one or more minimum skill sets may be defined for use on the skill set system. During the assessment process, the user may select one of these minimum skill sets to act as a filter, such that only those skills included in the minimum skill set need be displayed for review. This allows the skill assessment process to be tailored to an individual user. It also allows the assessment process to be completed more efficiently. The display and review of the additional skills that are not included in this minimum skill set may be optionally displayed for evaluation if desired.
According to another aspect of the invention, several levels of management may participate in the definition of one or more minimum skill sets as follows. For a designated management position, a subset of skills is selected for which assessment is required by all the employees reporting, either directly or indirectly, to that management position. The minimum skill set definition for any employee is defined by including all skills in any subset of skills associated with the management chain to which that employee reports. This is best illustrated by example. Assume a Corporation X has two divisions, A and B. The corporate management defines a subset Xxe2x80x2 of skills selected from the entire (comprehensive) skill set. These skills must be evaluated by all employees in the corporation. The management personnel of the corporate divisions also define skill subsets Axe2x80x2 and Bxe2x80x2, which includes the skills required for analysis by those employees in divisions A and B, respectively. It may be noted that the skiffs in subset Axe2x80x2 may be entirely different from those included in subset Bxe2x80x2. The minimum skill set definition for the employees of division A therefore includes all skills in subsets Xxe2x80x2 and Axe2x80x2. These skills must be evaluated by all employees of division A. Similarly, the minimum skill set definition for the employees of division B includes those skills in subsets X and Bxe2x80x2. Any number of levels of management hierarchy may be used to generate the minimum skill set definitions.
According to yet another aspect of the current invention, the hierarchy associated with a minimum skill set definition is displayed for a user during the skill assessment process. That is, for each of the skills included in the selected minimum skill set definition, an indication is provided to inform the user which level of management required the assessment of that skill. Returning to the previous example, assuming a minimum skill set definition for Corporation X is selected for use, those skills required at the corporate level are displayed using a first indicator, which may be, for example, a first font type. Skills required at the division level may be displayed using a second indicator, which may be a second font type. Skills required at both the corporate and division level may be displayed using either the first or second indicator, or a third indicator indicating both corporate levels required addition of the skill to the minimum skill set. This choice is dictated by user preferences. Any type of indicator may be used to perform this designation, including the color of text used to display the skill, or some other type of character symbol associated with the listed skill as displayed on a user display.
Another aspect of the invention relates to the organization of the comprehensive skill set that includes all skills in the skills database. The comprehensive skill set is organized in a hierarchical manner according to the types of skills included in the database. At the highest level of the hierarchy are broad categories of skills that are loosely related; for example, xe2x80x9cEngineering Skillsxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cAccounting Skillsxe2x80x9d. At a lower level in the hierarchy are more specific skill groupings. For example, xe2x80x9cEngineering Skillsxe2x80x9d may be divided into the skill groupings xe2x80x9cSoftware Development Skillsxe2x80x9d and xe2x80x9cHardware Development Skillsxe2x80x9d. These skill groupings may be further subdivided to include multiple subgroups, and so on. Any number of levels of hierarchy may be defined.
In the preferred embodiment, three levels of hierarchy are defined for the comprehensive skill set. When displaying the comprehensive skill set, the user may view the skill groupings at any hierarchical level. The user may further use the currently-displayed groupings to traverse the hierarchy in either an upwards or downwards direction. For example, the user may display all major skill groups. The user may then select a group for further investigation such that all skill categories included in the selected skill group and that are defined at the next lower level in the hierarchy are displayed, and so on. A listing of related skills is provided at the lowest level of the hierarchy. The capability to traverse the hierarchical skill organization allows a user to determine, xe2x80x9cat-a-glancexe2x80x9d, which types of skills are included in the comprehensive skill set.
The hierarchical structure of the comprehensive skill set is also used when performing the skill assessment process using one of the minimum skill set definitions. After a minimum skill set definition is selected, this selected definition may be used as a filter for displaying the hierarchical groups included in the comprehensive skill set. That is, at a given hierarchical level, a particular skill grouping is displayed if at least one skill in that grouping is included in the minimum skill set definition. This feature allows the user to complete the assessment process more efficiently since all related skills may be evaluated at one time, and only those skills in the minimum skill set definition need be considered.
According to another aspect of the invention, a minimum skill set definition may be automatically selected for a user when the user invokes the assessment tool. The assignment may be based on some type of user identification, or may be automatically provided based on the location of the user input device used to invoke the tool, for example. The assigned minimum skill set is selected to reflect the user""s employment position. As discussed above, this selected skill set may be defined according to the management chain to which the user reports.
Still other objects and advantages of the present invention will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiment and the drawings, wherein only the preferred embodiment of the invention is shown, simply by way of illustration of the best mode contemplated for carrying out the invention. As will be realized, the invention is capable of other and different embodiments, and its several details are capable of modifications in various respects, all without departing from the invention. Accordingly, the drawings and description are to be regarded to the extent of applicable law as illustrative in nature and not as restrictive.